MSNBC "Hardball with Chris Matthews" Interview with Rep. Mac Thornberry - Transcript

MSNBC "HARDBALL WITH CHRIS MATTHEWS" INTERVIEW WITH REP. MAC THORNBERRY (R-TX) INTERVIEWER: CHRIS MATTHEWS

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MR. MATTHEWS: U.S. Congressman Mac Thornberry is a Republican from Texas. He sits on the Armed Services Committee.

Congressman, there was an article in The New York Times today, an op-ed, a former special agent of the FBI, and he questioned a high- ranking al Qaeda official. That was, of course, Zubaydah. And he says in the Times today, quote, "It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional interrogation methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence. We discovered, for example, that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Zubaydah that wasn't or couldn't have been gained from regular tactics."

Now, here's an expert, FBI guy, no sweetheart. He engaged in interrogations, tough ones, and he says the good stuff about KSM, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was gotten by the regular methods, not by waterboarding, et cetera. Your view?

REP. THORNBERRY: Well, I don't know of anyone who was involved in the interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who disagrees with the fact that we were getting nothing from him before the enhanced techniques were used. We got a lot of information after they were used. And that information prevented another attack.

So in some carefully controlled circumstances, used by professionals, we know they can be helpful. That doesn't mean that all these people who are tossing around words like torture and all these --

MR. MATTHEWS: You don't like the word torture.

REP. THORNBERRY: No, I don't.

MR. MATTHEWS: Why not?

REP. THORNBERRY: I think people are too free with the use. I recommend folks go on the Internet and read these memos, because you will get a real feel for the carefully controlled, doctor-supervised circumstances under which these things were used. I think the --

MR. MATTHEWS: Do you think they're consistent with the Geneva Conventions? Because our own services believe that these are among the methods used by our enemy, for example, in North Korea by the Chinese communists, that violate the Geneva Conventions, and that's what they trained them to resist.

Now, to be consistent, if we say they broke the Geneva Conventions by using them, the Chinese communists, are we breaking them --

REP. THORNBERRY: Well, we know --

MR. MATTHEWS: -- if we use the same methods?

REP. THORNBERRY: We know for sure that we did use these methods in training our own folks on what to happen in case they are shot down over enemy territory.

MR. MATTHEWS: And are captive by people who, in the language of the DOD, do not abide by the Geneva Conventions. So if we say that is our judgment about the behavior when followed by our enemies, does it apply to us? Are we breaking the Geneva Conventions when we waterboard?

REP. THORNBERRY: Again, if you go back and read the memos, under the carefully controlled circumstances -- and all of those memos talk about if it's used in just this way, just this length of time, under just this supervision, it is permitted.

I'll tell you, even the more serious issue, though, is are you going to protect those guys that relied upon that legal memo, or are you going to hang them out to dry? In my --

MR. MATTHEWS: Well, I think the president says he's not going to hang them out to dry.

REP. THORNBERRY: Well, but then he goes back to the White House and changes his mind --

MR. MATTHEWS: No --

REP. THORNBERRY: -- and says, "Maybe we'll prosecute some of the people who wrote the memo."

MR. MATTHEWS: Well, that's different.

REP. THORNBERRY: Well, but if you are --

MR. MATTHEWS: What's wrong with going after the policymakers if the policy broke the law?

REP. THORNBERRY: Well, here's the key. You'd have a pep rally at CIA to try to improve their morale, and then, by the time you get back to the White House, you say, "Well, maybe we'll go after some of these people after all." What does that do to the morale of people who are out there risking their lives? It cuts their legs out from under them.

MR. MATTHEWS: Is that the most important thing about America, our morality or our morale? What's more important?

REP. THORNBERRY: Here's what I think --

MR. MATTHEWS: Is it more -- you suggested the most important thing in the world is the morale of our --

REP. THORNBERRY: I didn't say the most important thing in the world.

MR. MATTHEWS: -- of our CIA agents.

REP. THORNBERRY: No, I think it -- their morale is important in keeping this country safe. And you're already seeing, as a result -- I think President Obama could do whatever he wanted on keeping these techniques or stopping them

MR. MATTHEWS: I think you're wrong.

REP. THORNBERRY: No --

MR. MATTHEWS: What we're hearing from the agents, from the officials of the CIA, who have dedicated their lives to being spies, they say they don't like being blamed for policy. They want the policymakers blamed. Why aren't you willing to blame the policymakers if they did something wrong? The policymakers, not the agents.

REP. THORNBERRY: No, but --

MR. MATTHEWS: The top guys.

REP. THORNBERRY: -- here's what's wrong is to tell those CIA agents, "Here is the policy," under a memo that comes from the Justice Department. They ought to be able to rely on that. Now, to go back and question that and drag all this out again, it makes all of those agents less likely to do anything else and it makes --

MR. MATTHEWS: We're already doing that, because this guy --

REP. THORNBERRY: -- it makes other countries less likely to work with us.

MR. MATTHEWS: But Congressman, the new president of the United States, elected by the American people, says we're not going to waterboard anymore. So every CIA person knows we're changing our policy. So what's wrong with blaming people who set up a different policy? They're not being blamed. They know the policy's changed.

The question is, was the old policy American or not? You say it was.

REP. THORNBERRY: Here's what I think. I think those are issues that were debated in the last campaign. We can continue to have a perpetual campaign against the Bush administration, but if we do that, we are going to miss out on doing what we need to do to protect the country in the future. And that's what this smacks of.

MR. MATTHEWS: Does it bother you that Republican members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, your parallel committee, all of them signed on to a document which just came out the other day that basically pointed to the higher-ups as responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib?

REP. THORNBERRY: Oh, I think there's no doubt there was systematic failure in the prison system --

MR. MATTHEWS: Not just the bad apples.

REP. THORNBERRY: -- a systematic failure in the prison system that allowed the abuses at Abu Ghraib to occur. And it has been devastating to this country; there is no doubt about it.

MR. MATTHEWS: Should we investigate the civilians at the Defense Department who advocated that way of treating prisoners?

REP. THORNBERRY: No, no civilians at the Defense Department advocating doing what they did at Abu Ghraib.

MR. MATTHEWS: Well, that's what this report says they did.

REP. THORNBERRY: No, it says there were systematic problems where they did not properly supervise their people and that these improperly supervised people thought they could do it like the experts could. Now, that's a problem. And it was --

MR. MATTHEWS: Let me read to you this.

REP. THORNBERRY: -- devastating to the country.

MR. MATTHEWS: This is what the report said, signed by McCain and all the other Republicans as well. "The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of a few bad apples acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the U.S. government, civilians, solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearances of their legality, and then authorized their use against detainees. These efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate information, accurate intelligence, that could save lives, strengthen the hands of our enemies and compromise our moral authority."

That's a pretty damning report by both Republicans and Democratic senators.

REP. THORNBERRY: Sure. I don't think anybody can contest that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were horrible for our larger purposes in the world. That is a different question from saying, "Okay, now we're going to give al Qaeda and the world our playbook and we're going to tell them that we won't belly-slap or we won't have sleep deprivation" or the other specific techniques that are in this.

MR. MATTHEWS: But we already know this. It's in the report -- (inaudible). Everybody in America knows that we waterboarded. Everybody knows we waterboarded. Everybody knows we paraded people around naked, that we used dogs to scare people. That's all in this Senate report, and it's already been released, Congressman. The public knows this.

REP. THORNBERRY: You're confusing two things.

MR. MATTHEWS: Okay, which two?

REP. THORNBERRY: Well, the systematic problems at Abu Ghraib are indefensible.

MR. MATTHEWS: But they come from the top.

REP. THORNBERRY: What we're -- no, you cannot --

MR. MATTHEWS: According to this report by the Senate committee, they all come from the top.

REP. THORNBERRY: You can say that the secretary of Defense and the president are responsible for everything that goes on in their administration. But my point is, if you go on a witch hunt and try to blame every person in the chain of command, you are going to lose some protection that we need in the future. And that is not fair to any of the professionals who were involved.

The way to deal with these problems is through elections. We had one. President Obama won. Now, if he wants to continue to campaign, obviously he can. But he will make it much harder to protect the country or have any semblance of bipartisanship on the other big issues that are facing us.

MR. MATTHEWS: Let me read you some of the report. This is from the chairman of the committee, Carl Levin, the other day. "Claims such as those made by former Defense (sic/means Deputy) Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz that detainee abuses could be chalked up to an unauthorized act of a few bad apples were simply false."

Let me go through this. The dogs -- all those awful pictures; we can show them again tonight of the way dogs were used to intimidate prisoners --

REP. THORNBERRY: You understand this is different from the torture and the CIA program.

MR. MATTHEWS: No, but let me --

REP. THORNBERRY: But it's two completely separate things.

MR. MATTHEWS: This is where the cover-up, I believe, from the beginning came from the top. And now the Senate committee, a bipartisan report, said all this crap came from the top. Listen to this: "The Army dog handler at Abu Ghraib told military investigators in February 2004 that 'Someone from military intelligence gave me a list of cells for me to go see and pretty much have any dog bark at them. Having the dogs bark at detainees was psychologically breaking them down for interrogation methods."

Now, people like Cambone, civilian leaders of the Defense Department, went from GITMO, they went over to Iraq, and they spread the word, "You've got to soften up these prisoners." And they softened them up by humiliating them with dogs, by making them pose, hang around nude for weeks at a time. All this stuff came from the top, and it's all in this report. And now you're saying it's just some systemic problem. You're not blaming the politicians is all I'm asking.

REP. THORNBERRY: Yeah, it is --

MR. MATTHEWS: Who do you blame?

REP. THORNBERRY: It is a systemic problem, and --

MR. MATTHEWS: Who do you blame?

REP. THORNBERRY: I don't know. You know, I think we have a lot of blame-gaming. I think there has been an incredible amount of investigation on Abu Ghraib and who was responsible --

MR. MATTHEWS: Not enough.

REP. THORNBERRY: Maybe. People have lost their jobs. People have gone to jail because of it, and I think that's appropriate.

MR. MATTHEWS: Okay. I was on this show, Congressman, for weeks --

REP. THORNBERRY: That's a different thing.

MR. MATTHEWS: -- listening to the stonewalling from this administration, week after week. "It's just a few -- a bunch of country people like Lynndie England. They're not that educated. They're just regular people. It's all (their fault ?). They're crazy people. The big shots had nothing to do with it."

And now we find out from the top of the Senate Armed Services Committee, people like John Warner, who loved the military, said this stuff came from the top. Word by word, every detail, came from the top. It's all there in the report.

REP. THORNBERRY: I don't think anybody says every detail of how to handle these people --

MR. MATTHEWS: Do you want the dogs? Do you want the nudity? What picture do you want explained by the rule book?

REP. THORNBERRY: -- came from the top. I don't think that you can say that the secretary of Defense ordered dogs to be used on --

MR. MATTHEWS: Okay, I repeat again, "The abuse of detainees" --

REP. THORNBERRY: No, I heard what you said.

MR. MATTHEWS: -- "in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to a few bad apples."

REP. THORNBERRY: Yeah. And I don't think -- that's not what I said. There were bad apples, and there was a systemic failure to supervise them.

MR. MATTHEWS: Okay.

REP. THORNBERRY: And you had amateurs who were trying to use serious techniques that professionals could, under carefully controlled circumstances, use.

MR. MATTHEWS: Right.

REP. THORNBERRY: What we've seen this week are those carefully controlled techniques described in the memos and given to our enemy.

MR. MATTHEWS: At the time it happened, Congressman, everybody in the Republican leadership from the Defense Department on down played this stonewall of "Oh, we would never have had prisoners stacked up naked. We would never have dogs humiliating people. We would never do any of that." It turns out it was all in the rule book.

REP. THORNBERRY: I'll tell you, Chris, I will not defend --

MR. MATTHEWS: Okay, we've got to go. We have to go.

REP. THORNBERRY: Let me just say, I won't defend the lack of information Congress has gotten on some of these issues in the past.

MR. MATTHEWS: Right.

REP. THORNBERRY: What I will say, though, is 30 times congressional leadership, Republicans and Democrats, were briefed on these very techniques.

MR. MATTHEWS: I think you have a point there.

REP. THORNBERRY: So if there's going to be a big investigation --

MR. MATTHEWS: Let's get to that. Let's get to that.

REP. THORNBERRY: -- it needs to --

MR. MATTHEWS: By the way, thank God for John McCain, who was a POW, who's completely against this torture and completely signed on to this report by the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Thank you, Congressman Mac Thornberry of Texas, Republican.

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